Before Harmonix blew open the North American peripheral-based music game door that Konami had their foot in for years, most popular games of the genre appeared using a standard controller. PaRappa The Rapper was born and created a formula for its sequels other games in the same vein. Mad Maestro adopts concepts like “silly cartoon graphics” and “the illogical application of music to solve problems in-game” from the house of PaRappa. What it doesn’t adopt is the concept of “providing an entertaining video game experience”. It bets its proverbial farm on an original gameplay mechanic that, while commendable on paper, isn’t very interesting in effect and a soundtrack that is repetitive by nature. The unfortunate result is a video game that is almost immediately boring and repetitive.
Like any other rhythm game, Mad Maestro revolves around pressing buttons in time with some kind of music. The context provided for said pressing in this instance is the conduction of an orchestra. The game’s understandably thin story revolves around a conductor and a faerie attempting to convince people to join their orchestra (by using music to help them with their problems) so they can play their town’s concert hall, which is in danger of demolition, and revitalize their town’s interest in music. Each level details a different scenario in which the power of music is used to overcome adversity. Characters are eventually accompanied by horrid amateur voice acting and the art is, take it or leave it, colorful, goofy and Japanese. However, no one expects these to be the strong points of a good rhythm game and they will probably be critically ignored regardless of whether or not Mad Maestro is a good rhythm game, which it isn’t.
Mad Maestro features over 30 cherished classical tracks like “the song they use in the second level of Earthworm Jim”, “the song they use in the scene in Rat Race where Seth Green is unwillingly pulled up an aircraft control tower in a Jeep” and “the song that Elmer Fudd sings ‘Kill The Wabbit’ to”. While these songs are played, a glowing ball bounces in a triangular or diamond pattern between 3 or 4 circles respectively. The closer together the circles are, the faster the ball must move and the faster the tempo of the song is. When the ball is over top of each spot, the player must press one (any) of the four main buttons on the PS2 controller. It’s not that simple, though. Each circle will be colored blue, green or red. These correspond to how hard the button (using the new analog button feature of the Dualshock 2) must be pressed (soft, medium, hard) and how loud the conductor will tell his musicians to play. It sounds complicated, but it has adjustable settings and is quite easy to get a handle on after a bit of practice; it’s not the game’s main problem or a problem at all, really. The problem is that the gameplay rarely moves beyond this. Occasionally (rarely), there are notes that must have a direction held on the directional pad while played or notes that can be sustained by holding the button, but neither appears often enough to alleviate the pure boredom.
The bulk of Mad Maestro consists of playing quarter notes at different pressures (usually in very sensible patterns, providing little challenge) while being graded on how well each measure was played. Play well and the meter goes up; play poorly and the meter goes down. If the meter is full at the end of the song, victory is achieved and the performance receives an overall grade. That’s it. It’s neither engaging nor fun. The reward for playing well is a “medley mode” in which the song is changed mid-other song and the notes are blank, which means they can be played at any desired pressure/volume. This is even more mind numbing than the regular mode. Upon completion of the medley mode, the player is presented with a different mini-game for each level. It’s too bad that, while there are some mini-games that integrate more specific button and pad presses, they’re just different ways of gauging how well one can act as a metronome. It doesn’t make a difference whether you’re pressing the same button over and over in 4/4 time to shoot digital aliens or dress a fashion model because it still sucks.
While Mad Maestro is fairly obscure, there's a rather widespread custom community for it: hitting things in time to your favourite music. That's basically an experience equivalent to playing the game. It's kind of quirky, but completely avoidable. It loses any entertainment value the moment you master it, which should be under and hour and it only lasts for another hour or so after that. Stay away from Mad Maestro. There are games like PaRappa, Um Jammer Jammy and Gitaroo Man that embarrass is in every aspect and are much more worth gamers' time.